What it says on the tin. Truth be told, there are people who annoy me. Everywhere, even around here. I plain don’t want to read what they have to say. When I was younger I would have verbally vivisected them and their opinions but I have a feeling this community is on the thin-skinned end anyway what with people throwing flags on legit posts all the damn time.
So I just want the blighters gone from my sight, but I can’t find an option to do so. What am I missing? Please tell me I’m missing something.
Ninja Edit: Just to give people a better idea of why I want this. I’m okay with divisive topics. Gods know, I have a few divisive opinions of my own. I’m glad to debate my beliefs. I don’t even mind harsh language. In my country, ‘asshole’ is a term of endearment. I do mind people whose idea of proper argumentation is ‘I don’t care what you say, Charles Manson was a swell guy’. There is such a thing as the proper way of arguing a point and I neither have the time to teach it to people nor the inclination to verbally tear them apart cause then I’d need to make a new account most likely.
Insofar as I know there isn’t a way to do that via forum provided services. I would say the only real way we have currently is to just be as you said the opposite. Be thick-skinned. Don’t pay attention to them if you don’t like them. Like most of us do, don’t pay attention to things that aren’t worth your time.
I believe a full block/ignore user function doesn’t mesh with Discourse’s design philosophy, if I understood correctly…Here’s a thread on the topic and here is a specific post from one of the co-founders regarding why.
Funny thing is, the people I’m thinking about ignoring aren’t doing anything wrong or possibly harmful. They just… exist in a way that annoys me. People being locked into dogmata for example. People who try to take part in a debate but are incapable of discerning between (their) opinion and quantifiable fact. These are people who hopefully aren’t hurting anyone but themselves. I still don’t want them on my planet.
So that argument doesn’t really fit I don’t think. I’ll take it up with Discourse I guess.
This is something I’ve asked before and it seems the answer is the same as before: You can’t. Plain and simple. You either tough it up and chose to ignore them of your own accord or report them if they crossed the line. Other than that you can’t do anything. I know it’s a Discord philosophy and all that but it’s one I don’t agree with and never will.
I don’t block people nilly-willy or just because I felt like it. A few isolated arguments and disagrements aren’t enough of a justification for me to block someone, in fact, I can probably count with both hands the number of people I blocked in the past 10 years, that weren’t bots and or spammers. Still, that’s my decision to make and no one else’s. Honestly sometimes I think this “philosophy” was made by those like to talk horse-raddish all day and want others to listen to them with no means to fight back.
Freedom of speech doesn’t mean I have to deal with other’s BS. I don’t care if you think I could learn something from it, if a conversation escalates to the levels it usually does (which tends to happen a few times), there’s rarely something to be learned from it at that point (or those interested in listening). Whoever came up with the idea that blocking only serves to “protect one’s bubble” IMO has a very narrow-minded view.
I agree with you on the one thing though. When it comes to the whole “philosophy” of discord, not having the choice, in and of itself limits us people who’re here to chat, and or talk about certain topics. Nothing can be gained from someone who continuously makes off-topic comments, So in effect having the option to block another user on either a certain topic or in general could add. Of course, that’s not to say there wouldn’t be a certain amount of users who just block others when they either don’t get their way or just, to put it in simple terms, simply overemotional. I find, usually, whenever I get the urge to block anyone on anything that if I take the time to consider what happened they usually don’t deserve such exclusion.
I understand you, people who comments about wip/characters/games which they don’t understand, after just one playthrough. Spaming about unimportant and not necessarily funny things, talking about their believes as a facts/the one and only truth. And people with realy bad english…
OMG you want to block me, didn’t you?!
But seriously, you can disagree with them but blocking is not the way. It’s reminds me about south park episodes about safe space. If you ban every republican, ther will be no dialogue and chance to discuss/redefined your/their point of view.
At that point, we should close the topic, or split posts off to a new topic; we do that in many cases.
I agree with the Discourse philosophy against muting users in public threads.
Imagine going to a park full of litter, but each time you pick up a piece of litter, it only gets cleaned up for you; everybody else has to clean up the litter for themselves to have a clean park. All new visitors to the park see a park covered in trash.
Our goal is to clean up the park for everyone, so no one has to clean it up for themselves.
Ins’t there some conflict of interests there? I mean, you’re a moderator, I don’t know if you’re a volunteer or a wage worker, but fact is if the people were given the tools to deal with or avoid trouble-makers, they’d be doing half of your job so maybe you defend that philosophy because it benefits everyone, yourself included. Or peraphs it ain’t necessary yet because this community ins’t that big and displays enough maturity that a handful of mods are capable of keeping it in check.
Every online game, forum and chat service I know has a block feature. Discord is of the few, peraphs the sole example I’m aware that decided to implement that fancy philosophy. Maybe just to be different… I don’t know. Don’t fix what ain’t broken and has worked for years. Besides, if you’re really worried about “cleaning the park for everyone” then peraphs that could be solved with a simple “Report + Block” attitude. It’s a middle-road.
I can see the benefit of relying on the report feature - that way the person is warned about their behaviour in an attempt to fix it. All blocking does is cease contact with that person, it doesn’t fix the issue. That said, you need implement some kind of measure so that people don’t go around flagging left and right just they felt like it.
I think it’s also perhaps worth reiterating that it’s possible to mute specific threads. If there’s a topic that’s proving particularly bothersome because of the subject matter, or whatever other reason (without being actually offensive and thus flag-worthy), at least there’s a way to make that topic invisible—or even an entire category, if one prefers.
And there are actually a lot of quite large Discourse communities, so it’s a model that’s being used across a number of different cultures, languages, interest groups, et cetera.
I do know what you mean, TBH. Some people can be… More difficult to talk to than others. With people like this, I suppose there are three possible ways to deal with them:
1: Reply to their messages and just try to logically explain why your opinion is different from theirs. (Not sure I’d recommend this option. It’s what I usually try to do, but this mostly just ends up in the other person becoming more frustrated and trying harder to persuade me that my opinion is wrong.)
2: Just ignore them. Don’t read their posts and don’t reply to their PMs. Just stick your fingers in your ears and go, “La la la, I’m not listening” until they go away.
3: If the person in question is PMing you, politely inform them that you don’t want them to PM you anymore and tell them that if they continue to PM you, you’ll report them. They probably won’t be happy about it, but if they continue to PM you, even after you’ve asked them not to, I imagine the mods would be quick to do something about it. Most likely they’d give the person a warning not to message you again, and if they carried on messaging you, even after specifically being asked not to, they might very well get banned for harassment.
If you’re referring to the kind of people who will derail a regular conversation about the new Star Wars movie to go on a ten paragraph rant trying to convince everyone in the forum that the world is banana shaped, I find it’s easier to just laugh about it, rather than let myself get frustrated.
The reason for joining this community is different for each individual, except we all have a common thread that binds us together. The desire to participate in the CoG/Hosted Games experience. As such, we, as a collective should respect the desire of each and every other community member to participate as well.
I’m not going to go into the ethics and morality of blocks/mutes - I just want us to focus on what brings us all here.
Part of the CoG/Hosted Games experience is the company’s mission to further the inclusion of those marginalized elsewhere in the mainstream western internet community. This does mean the standards and norms for what is tolerated or what is policed is different then you would find in the more mainstream communities.
As it relates to the CoG and Hosted games, I think the most important thing to keep in mind is the respect due the community members. Reviewers and testers need to keep in mind that that the authors here are due respect for their accomplishments. This is not to limit criticism but rather to keep it within the constructive criticism arena.
Just like authors need to respect those providing the feedback and testing. Testers may not say things you expect as an author ( I will never forget being told my allegoric writing gave the tester the idea I was writing about bestiality) but part of participating here in this community is respecting the tester and their feedback.
A block/ignore feature defeats the above idea - for both authors and testers. If this is not the type of experience you wish as an author, you are free to run other types of groups and you are free not to participate here. Some of the most well known authors rarely or never visit.
Personally, I love getting to know the community because I feel I can connect in my writing with them better this way but I also know that in getting to know everyone we may see some of each other that is not ideal. I am willing to accept this community as it is because I found it has given me more then it demands.
As a tester, the same things apply. Just in a mirror type of way.
Please keep in mind that most mods and leaders here are volunteers that are also writers/developers and they may not always be around seeing everything. Especially in off-topic sections where most of us just don’t have the time to go through tens and even scores of threads.
Flagging a post will allow the moderators to focus on problematic issues. It doesn’t mean the flagged post is automatically “wrong” or the author penalized. It just means that someone thinks this deserves attention as a potential issue - some more urgent then others.
It is better to make everyone aware with such flags due to limited time then let things fester and boil over into something major. I honestly see this as something that is good about this community - the thread owners have a bit more control over how sensitive they want their topics to be and some, like Cataphrak and Multiplechoice allow more then others.
With regards to politics and some of the other off-topic threads - I personally don’t have the time to pursue the posts there I once did - so I don’t see things I once did. These are the threads where flagging would help the most.
My first wall of text for 2018. Not even 24 hours into the new year. The irony does not escape me.
In all seriousness, while I greatly appreciate Cataphrak and other permissive thread authors, I feel like my occasionally confrontational hotheadedness takes advantage of their laxness. That is to say, sometimes I feel like I come off as a bully, and I try to reign myself in before I cross that line.
Not everyone second-guesses themselves as much as I do, but I suppose having your thoughts spewed upon a screen to be weighed, measured and found wanting is something that can give at least a few forumgoers pause. I guess it would count as the first line of defense against off-topic spam, with topic splitting and outright lockin down the topic being further down the line.
It seems like this entire thread is a discussion about something that no one reading this thread has the power to change regardless of whether or not a consensus could be reached.
I too agree with the need for the ability by individuals to mute or ignore other individuals.
@dfabulich In my opinion, this does not address that there are things which do not qualify as against the rules as they are now but still negatively impact the forum environment for many users.
I think the forum as it stands now alternates between extremes. In the time I have been reading these forums, there has only been one person that I seriously wanted to mute or ignore. Being unable to find such an option, I considered suppressing notifications of that person’s activity but the problem is that the reason I see that person’s posts in the first place is that the person would comment on threads that I found worth reading. I refuse to stop reading an entire thread merely because someone other than the author made abhorrent or unintelligible comments. Apparently, I was not the only one to feel that way as that person ended up banned. However, banning is an overly extreme reaction that effectively mutes that user for every other user regardless of whether or not they wished such. I also know a few authors commented about valuing that user’s comments as being a viewpoint the author would not otherwise have seen. I must admit that on very rare occasions I found myself agreeing with an insightful comment by this person or grateful for some bit of information I would never otherwise have learned. Currently, users effectively get ignored by the entire community regardless of individual wishes or entire intelligent discussions get closed down rather than merely allowing anyone who feels offended to opt out. If an ignore option had been present, that user and similar others might still be contributing today.
